Description

Every week in the Platform Lab (also known simply as "building 20") you'll find various development groups from around Microsoft meeting with customers. We wondered just what went on there, and how important it
is to both the customers, who learn about the latest technologies, and Microsoft, which gets great feedback on products before they ship.

One of the teams that most frequently uses building 20 is the ASP.NET team, headed by Scott Guthrie. So, we asked Scott to show us around building 20.

The Discussion

I respect the fluent, informative and professional presentations of Scott Guthrie. His appearances on DotNet Rocks! and MSDNTV are destined to be classics. The transformation of ASP to ASP.NET should be regarded as miraculous. ASP.NET 2.0 looks almost
divine.

But his use of the term "community activist" may redefine the meaning of the word for the future W2 generations who really don't care anyway. So, dig: in the future, Pat Boone will be remembered as a "community activist" for the automotive industry.

Are these tours "fly in and see what's going on" type things? Do the participants have to pay or is it covered by Microsoft?

I'd be interested in participating either way, as one of the things our company is lacking is real direction on what's possible with Microsoft. We get a lot of that from Novell (hence, we're primarily a Novell company, except at the OS level which is Windows).

It'd be great to show what's possible in our industry (healthcare, I work at one of the largest hospitals in the world).

edit: ahh, Insiders and MVP's. Guess that counts me out as there aren't really "Enterprise" MVP's, are there?

Robert, Why don't you go into building 20 with a hidden mini camera and record what microsoft is kepping in secret, like IIS 7? Nobody would know that it was you... or maybe yes, but you could always say that it was Mike Hall